He Builds Houses And Blows Things Up

Fireworks look effortless from a blanket on the grass, but the work behind them is anything but. We’re joined by Jim Wright, better known as “Pyro Wright,” a local licensed pyrotechnician who’s bringing professional fireworks to Black Mountain and Swannanoa and explaining what most people never see: the rules, the risk, the planning, and the pride that go into doing it right.

We talk about Jim’s path from Long Island to Florida and finally to the mountains, why Black Mountain felt like the moment traffic and chaos dropped away, and how building a life here changed what “success” looks like. Then we get into the nuts and bolts of a real fireworks show company in North Carolina: classifications, licensing, permits, ATF-related compliance realities, and the insurance requirements that can make or break an event. Jim also shares a surprising truth for any small business owner: once you’re in fireworks, you’re in logistics, which means trucking, scheduling, and costs that don’t care about your best intentions.

From there, we zoom into what’s coming up for July 4 in Black Mountain and the Sourwood Festival weekend in Swannanoa. Jim explains how computer-fired shows create better flow and fewer dead spots, why smaller venues can unlock low-lying effects people rarely get to see, and what “close proximity” can mean when it’s done safely. We also nerd out on crowd-pleasers beyond fireworks, like fog-filled bubbles for photos and a parade train concept that blends bubbles and sparks.

If you care about local events, public safety, and the small-town businesses that make celebrations possible, hit subscribe, share this with a friend planning an event, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Pyro Wright

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Jim Wright, Pyro Wright. I am really glad you're here today. I am I've known you maybe maybe a year. Yeah, more than that, a little bit longer than that. But anyway, we've always had a conversation about fireworks because that's what you do for your real life job. And so I would like to know more about Jim Wright. So tell me what's your story and where are you from?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

I'm originally from Long Island, a little town called Blue Point. It's on the water. Grew up there, went to school there, left New York finally in 2003 for an amazing life in Florida that didn't really turn out to be so amazing. It was fun when we were there, but uh it was just too much chaos. So we decided to come to the mountains and dial it back a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

So you're a halfback?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

That's kind of okay. I had never heard that term till I lived here. I think that's funny. And it and it's true. There's a lot of halfbacks. Yeah. Very cool. All right. And so you went to school in Long Island. Because you're not, let's see, 2003, you would have been um out of school for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We're about the same age, I think. So I pretty much know that one. So and you have lived in this area how long?

SPEAKER_02 1:21

In the Black Mountain area. Yes. 2012 or 2010, I bought my house in Black Mountain.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Okay. Cool. And you're the fireworks guy. You're a chamber member, which I appreciate. Thank you for your membership. But also you're going to be doing the fireworks for Black Mountain this year, which I'm excited about because why would we not have a professional fireworks guy doing the local fireworks? But then you're also doing one in Swannanoa during the Sourwood Festival weekend when we're having a Kansas City barbecue competition. And that's pretty exciting too. So two in like two months.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

In yeah, in less than a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

In less than a month. Wow.

unknown 2:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Less than a month, less than a month apart and 40-something days till the 4th of July.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

So tell me this. When I think of a fireworks guy, I think of the guy on the side of the road that sells sparklers and every kind of fireworks that are really just a sparkler that's a different packaging. And then you're not that guy. You're totally not that guy. Tell me all the certifications and the rules and the all not all of them, though. I don't really want to know all of them, but you know, tell me kind of what the what the what's the difference? Tell me.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Well, there's still a lot of certification to be the guy on the side of the

What A Pro License Takes

SPEAKER_02 2:36

road selling stuff. Okay. But the guy on the side of the road is there's different classifications of fireworks. And in North Carolina, you're pretty much limited to the snakes and sparklers. Yeah. Same as Joe Dirt. Snakes and Sparklers, that's all you get. Unless you have a license, then you go on to other things. But then you need all the permitting and insurance and ATF qualifications, and there is a lot that goes into it. Did I mention insurance? Because there is a lot just in insurance.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

I know. I'm learning. That's what horrendofine is. Oh, yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

So yeah, there's the trucking. So we we realized um so after doing this since 1998, a couple of years ago, I decided to do it. And uh we were gonna just kind of dial it back and not travel the country and travel around anymore and just be a husband and wife thing that just does a couple little local things.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

That didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

No, it can't it can't work like that. Uh it's too expensive. The the costs are just too crazy. And we realized that in order to start a firework company, you essentially are starting a trucking company as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

I wouldn't I would not have thought of that. Right, neither did we.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah. Surprise.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

We knew we'd be trucking it, but we didn't realize that it was just gonna be all like we're just we're a trucking company. Downstreets fireworks. Okay. So yeah, there's a lot involved.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Very cool. Right. You have a you have a different job that you do as well. Yes. Do you want to tell me what that is? I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

I remodel houses.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah, so I build things and then I blow things up.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

That's awesome. So you're like Gonzo on the Muppets. Well, he doesn't build anything, he just blows things up. Well, that's cool. I always got to get the Muppets in there somehow. All right. So how'd you meet your wife?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

She is actually a daycare teacher in Weaverville.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Wow. That's a road trip every day.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, it's a bit of a commute. Um so she was uh my son's daycare teacher.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

So that's not just like a book or a movie. Well that happens in real life.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Where people meet a daycare teacher, Brian. Oh well. Is that like sorry? I miss Harry Met Sally kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

So

Family Life And Mountain Living

SPEAKER_02 4:45

yeah, I uh we dated, we went on a date after the kids graduated. They turned five and got out and they were ready to go to school. So then I took her out for a drink for her birthday, and here we are. And now we're married. Now we're married. That was 13 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Wow. Well, good, cool, cool. All right, and y'all live in Black Mountain. What do you love to do when you're in Black Mountain and you're not working?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

When I'm not working and I'm in Black Mountain, I like to go just drive around. Just and it's funny. Laura's like, why do you just you do you go just drive around back roads and do nothing all day long? And not all day, but I do enjoy it. But um when I first moved here, I didn't realize that Black Mountain had all of its own stuff. Like I had a I was out on the motorcycle ride one day. I was like, wow, we have a pool. Like just look so many things that I discovered around, you know. And I like to walk around, drive around, go eat. Where do you like to eat? We got a few places, uh, Trailhead, Fresh. Those are our two two main ghosts. Two main places.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Okay. All right. Uh so I don't I don't see you around town a lot. You guess you y'all are probably working all the time elsewhere. Yeah, and uh, but but I see you on the social media a good bit. That's where I kind of make sure you're behaving and not off the chain, you know. Tell me how you decided to move here. Like what where did that come from? How do you pick Black Mountain from Florida and all this?

SPEAKER_02 6:09

All right. So it didn't start with Black Mountain. We moved to it was our original place was in Weaverville when we moved from Florida. Um and this wasn't with Laura.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Uh, but we moved to Weaverville. The reason we came to the Asheville area was when I was living in Florida. It was a few years before we moved here. A friend of mine was looking for a place to invest in some land, and he was told to come and check it out. So I came and checked it out with him. And he never came to invest, but uh, I ended up moving here a year or two later. That's cool. Uh so that's how we wound up here. And then as far as Black Mountain goes, uh I looked around for a place and we drove, I looked at 30-something houses, and Lee Sed over that right a right away was off this, that was out of the picture. We looked from Weirville down to Henderson area, and then finally we started coming out this way, and as soon as we get out past exit eight, traffic starts to drop off, and it's like nice mountains and not chaos. So I stumbled across my house that I'm at now, and it had a fence around it, and it had a detached garage, and it needed a little bit of work, and I got a great rate. And as soon as I saw it, I said sold. That's mine.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

So And you can fix anything that needs to be fixed.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

So now it's uh No, it's no longer a garage, it's an office and st I guess some garage, a lot of storage and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

I made my own mess.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

That's right. So where do you get to go when you get to go to a cool place to do fireworks, when you get to travel?

SPEAKER_02 7:44

We don't really travel now to do the fireworks anymore. You send people Well, we don't do really any because we started our own thing, we just went for North Carolina license. Okay. Okay, so we don't travel out of North Carolina. Okay, that's good. So so lately, yeah, it's it's all how does how does one market how does one market fireworks show?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

I mean, like, do you talk to ms municipalities? Who do you talk to the most?

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yeah, we so it's a lot of trying to get in touch with the right person at what municipality. Sometimes they reach out to us. We got to get our site, website up going a little bit stronger with better SEO. But uh we reach out to municipalities and we go to events, expos, and things like that. Uh it's slow, it's more of a for us, it's been more of a word of mouth thing than it's been somebody

Selling Shows And Paperwork Reality

SPEAKER_02 8:33

just out of the blue somewhere on the other side of the state. Um we do get a few here and there hits that come in, but a lot of times people will call us for an event next month or next week. Oh or in two weeks. And that doesn't work. We cannot need to pull that off. Yeah. Uh it takes weeks and weeks and weeks for all the paperwork and the permits and all that, especially in Bunkham County.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

As we know. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So I've got a guy coming next month. You've got to meet him. He is a Google expert and he knows how to make all the free things off of Google work for you for marketing and things like that. So we'll talk about that in a minute. But you definitely wanna definitely want to talk to him. He's pretty dynamite. And he and I together are trouble. A lot of fun. All right. We we think we're fun. We're pretty sure everybody else in the room is annoyed, but that's okay. No, we'll behave. So do we hike? Do we do the outdoorsy stuff?

SPEAKER_02 9:28

We do some outdoorsy stuff. Um, not a lot of hiking. We do go on a few hikes here and there. We're more when we had the kids when the kids were younger. We still have the kids, but when they sold them. We used to take them up camping and we'd go like Carolina Hemlocks and stuff and go just go hike and play in the creek all the time. She's more of a beach girl than a woods girl. I'm not a beach girl. We just learned yesterday when the heat started picking up that she may not be a beach

Kids, Camping, And Local Favorites

SPEAKER_02 9:54

girl anymore either.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Okay. That's a bonus.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

That she's not a beach girl?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah. Or do you like the beach?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

It's better than nothing.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Sitting home all day. Um, so we gotta find something to get out and do. But we were just talking about it yesterday in the heat, and I was like, maybe we do need to go out in the heat every day and start working because it's gonna be hot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Every year it gets worse and worse. And I'm like, I don't know how I did it last year.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

So you were you camped. So most of us camp when we have like kids. Like that's when we camp. That's when we learn how to do all of those things. I took my boys their uh I did all of their boy, I should have gotten the Boy Scout badges and all the different awards because I'm pretty sure I did them all. But but uh I have a friend whose house just was destroyed by fire and he is all of a sudden he lives on 25 acres, and all of a sudden he's become a camper. And now he has to live in the woods. Obviously, I can't tell you where he is because he doesn't want anybody to know where his stuff is hidden because you know, but it is kind of cool to. I mean, I'm kind of excited for him. He's excited because what else are you gonna do? Your house is burned down, but uh but trying to pull all the camping stuff out, and he's like, Well, I have a tent from 20 years ago. I'm like, No, no, we're going shopping, we're gonna buy new tent stuff. So anyway, I don't know why I told you all of that, just because the camping outdoor stuff, and he's about to learn all about it. And I guess I'll learn about it too, because I'm gonna go visit him. But anyway, tell me where where are your kids now? Right now. Well, what are they doing? One of them lives here.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

There, so my son is at an A B Tech. And then my daughter is at AC Reynolds.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

She's graduation is in a few weeks. Um, and then she's going off to Western.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Oh wow, great.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Um do agricultural stuff. And then my spare kid, my stepchild. I love that. He is uh going to App State. Uh he graduates. So just yeah, same thing. His graduation is the day before hers. Okay. And so they I got two kids that are leaving the nest to go live on a college campus, and we almost have an empty house. I got one kid lingering because he's in A B Tech.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah. Oh. So I had one at A B Tech. I get it.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

He's home sleeping right now. He's the only one I could really put my finger on his whereabouts. I see.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Okay. Well, that might be a good thing. I learned early on that if I know where they are, I don't then I worry about them so much. You know, then if I don't, if I know they're just at school or at work or whatever, I don't worry about them.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

I don't, yeah. That's we got really lucky. Like my mom was like, you're gonna have kids just like you. And thank God she was wrong.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

It's the most exciting thing you've learned since you moved here about the area, other than finding a swimming pool.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Well, we found some swimming holes too. Okay. So that's a plus.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

All right.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Are they secret swimming holes? Are you willing to share? I'm more of a I'd rather go to a swimming hole, a spot, a creek um than a pool. Laura doesn't want any of it. She doesn't care about it. So no, I don't want to give it all the way to the city. They're not see they're secrets. They're not really secret, but I mean it's not gonna tell me. No.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Okay. Well, that's fine. That's maybe I see you there.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

I'll shut you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, I'll probably never go on good one. I'm I'm kind of with Laura on that one. Sorry. I like to go look at the at the waterfalls and things like that and and the water, and that's really cool, but I'm not getting in it. As a kid, we used to call it was called rock hopping. And that meant that when you came to to Black Mountain, Swann, Montreat, whatever, we had sh we had rock hopping shoes. And rock hopping shoes just means your cousin's hand-me downs that were bad when he gave them to you, and now they're yours, those are the ones you use to rock hopp because you're gonna come home with creek all over you. So but I do love I still like love the idea of going rock hopping. I just I don't know that I'll actually do it, but it is kind of fun to think about when you're a kid.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Uh and I mean growing up on Long Island, we didn't really going upstate was the way to go. Okay. We would go upstate and camp and go play in the waterfalls and go. I was a I did a lot of climbing. I did a lot of rock climbing when I lived up there.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

And that was I love that. Like that was amazing to go around climbing there. I got hurt though, and I can't climb anymore, or else I wouldn't freely do it here. I started doing it here a little bit and then I got hurt, so I can't climb anymore.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

All right.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

But uh other things I like to I don't know, I just like I like to go just go walk around downtown at times, you know, and it's it's a little town. It's a cute little town. I mean it's just to walk around and look at all the little stuff. I mean, even though we live here, there's still just fun to go out and just walk around and see people or just go out to go out to a bar and listen to some music or there's lots of good live music around here, that's for sure. Yeah, we'll go up to Silverado's and for karaoke night and just goof around and play some pool.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah, we really which which we do stay very local. You know, we'll go down to Old Fort and hang out down there. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

You been to watershed yet? The the new brewery and old fort? No. It's owned by the same people that are the Grange and Jen, Hell or High Water. And McDowell is a dry county, so you can't sell alcohol unless you brewed it there. So now it's a brewery and they can sell their alcohol there. So that's that's the story. And it's got the bike parks and all the cool stuff that you know, the waterfront and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, is it right? I haven't been down there, but it's it's right by his farm, too, right? Sure. I don't know. You don't know his farm isn't. No, I don't.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

I'll make it up. I'll pretend I do. No. Just right off the exit. You turn right, go back a little bit, and it's on there. Yeah, it's really cool. Um, I've I've actually been a couple of times, but I'm super excited about going this summer too. And Casey's just such a great supporter of everything up in Black Mountain. He lives in Old Fort, but you know, he has three businesses here in Black Mountain, and all three are chamber members, and you know, he's a good guy.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah, he's a good guy.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

We like him. I think I saw him this morning at Triple Ader, but he was talking to somebody else. So I didn't get to hang out, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

I haven't seen him in a in a bit. We just went to the Grange last week, though.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

I go every Monday.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

The local special. Twelve bucks. Hamburger, French fries, and a drink. We can't get that, and it's really good. Monday? Local special? Only on Mondays. Yep. You need to try it. We'll see you there next time.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Because my number one china is closed on Monday.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

You're gonna, of course, keep talking about people who aren't chamber members. Come on, stop. Anyway, no, no, no. So tell me something else. Tell me something good.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Something good.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

July 4th. Talk about lat. What's it gonna look like around here? All right, so far as you're concerned.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

July 4th around here is gonna be a bit different than it has been in the past. We s we never I never got to see the show because I'm always out working doing other things. Laura got to see it a few years ago, and we saw a video of it last year, and it seemed a bit chaotic and sporadic, and big breaks and dead spots in between.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Okay, so tell us the good stuff. We're talking good here. We're not talking about bad stuff.

Designing July 4 Fireworks

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Tell me what we're gonna do differently.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yeah, so we're gonna change all of that. Okay. Um we shoot with a computer. Um, everything's electric fire running around with flares in our hands. It's a little more safe and programmable. Okay. And uh fluent. Um so Laura's gonna be the one shooting that show. Oh, really? So she's not happy to be down in a hole there, but um, she's gonna be down in a hole shooting that. Um, but it's it's gonna be definitely an interesting show. We're getting a lot for the twenty tw for the 250th anniversary, we're doing uh a little more red, white, and blue stuff and slightly changing it up. And then we have this uh and that's for the fourth, and then the Sourwood thing. We're looking it's at the KOA campground. And uh it's a it's a great little location uh because the crowd can see everything that's happening from the ground up. So we have a lot of little low-lying effects that we're gonna do. It's not gonna be your average look over the trees and see this kind of thing. It's and I'm trying to figure out if we're gonna do some close proc stuff there too. Close proximity being within 15 feet of the audience. Oh wow. So like the sparks and maybe some big comet things and some flames or something. Some different things that people haven't seen before.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

My insurance guy isn't listening to this, but keep going.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

So yeah, and just looking at mix it up with a bunch of stuff there that you don't see in a regular, regular big show because you can't. It's just it's not a municipality show, it's a small, intimate show. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

So we're just looking like it's short and it's just a just a event. It'll be fun. We're just looking at the other event that's going on that whole day. Two days. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

And if it gets so the yeah. Hopefully, kind of sort of hopefully that it the Fourth of July gets rained out for the Sour Wood Festival.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

That would be awesome. We have two fireworks shows in two nights. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

So that's what you know, that's what we'll have going on around well in Black Mountain for the fourth, and then doing Bunkham County fireworks. But that we're trying to figure out a new location for that, and that's a little bit of a mess right now. Yeah. So that's what we have going on and Old Fort. Old Fort was our first show that we ever did for for our company, and so we still shoot with them, uh which is great. I mean, we have all three of our shows are within 15 minutes, you know, 20 minutes of each other. So it's if something goes on, it's like we're we're all right here.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Aaron Powell Now y'all do something else too that's totally not fireworks, but it's really just as much as flashy that you're gonna help us with at Sourwood. Oh yeah. Tell me a little bit about that. It's just, I mean, to me that so I'm not, truth be known, I'm not a fireworks like fanatic. I'm not like, oh, I gotta go see the fireworks. I'm not super excited. I have to have a another event to coincide with it. So like last year I was at the top of Hell or High Water and got to watch the show from there, and that was kind of cool. This year I'm not sure where I'll be, but it might be there, it might be at another place. But but this other thing is super fun to me. I just it just makes me happy. So something about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

You're talking about the

Fog Bubbles And Parade Train

SPEAKER_02 20:06

fumbles, the the fog bubbles. Okay. So it's it's a weird little effect. It's just a bubble machine, but the bubbles get filled with fog. It's something that we bought to go with our weddings, and like it's just the extra, extra thing that we would add into our our close, intimate displays. You know, we do the sparks, a couple little gerbs or something for people to come in and out, and then we offer the bubbles, the fog, the fog bubbles for photos. And last year, we had someone who wanted us to come out and do some close proximity stuff, and uh we just couldn't pull it off for them in time in the in the location that they were in. So we offered to just come out and do the the fog bubbles for them, the fobbles. Laura hates the word foggles. I don't like the word bubbles either, but it's fogger. Fog bubbles. That's Foggles? We could work on that.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Let's work on foggles. I like better than foggles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Uh anyway. So we uh we offered, that's the Barefoot Baby Foundation. They asked us to come out and do a thing for their Halloween thing. And we came out and we did the Halloween thing, and then we came out and we did a New Year's for them, and we came and we sat for a couple of hours and just sat and blew bubbles. The amazing thing is the adults were loving it. It's like kids were the it was and I I said that to Laura. I said, We I like doing it just because I like watching adults pop bubbles and smile, and like it's just so weird. It's just fun. It's fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

It is then you have a little train certain things. I mean you don't you don't like advertise that and all that, but you have a cool train. Tell me about your cool train.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

It's in the works. It's not okay, it's not a completed train yet. Okay. Um, but it's in the works. And uh the cars behind it uh have the the fumbles come out of the locomotive, and then the cars behind it have sparks that come out of them. So we can do that in parades and stuff like that. We just we haven't it's not complete yet. Um maybe by this year it'll be complete. Hopefully we're gonna have that.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Jolly. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Uh so hopefully we'll be doing that at the Christmas parade. And uh I don't know. We'll probably have people also that are giving out the candy. They're gonna probably be running around with little bubble guns too, just to keep the bubble thing going.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

They're gonna be handing out candy. They're not gonna be throwing it. That's right. Oh Lord, what a mess. What a mess. Anyway. Well, uh I anything I've forgotten to ask you or you want to tell me, or super fun?

SPEAKER_02 22:24

I don't know. Well, if we get back to the company, we can, you know, like we originally, like I said, we just it was just supposed to be Laura and I as the just us, and we realize we can't do that. So we're expanding and growing.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

My son helped us last year. He was 18, and now my spare son is also 18. So he's gonna come and help Laura.

unknown 22:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Um, and I'll have my son, he'll probably end up going down to help out down in Old Fort. So now we're expanding, and we

Growing The Crew And Training Safety

SPEAKER_02 22:53

got more more guys, licensed shooters working for us, and we're working right now to help train the fire department, get them safe, because when they come out, they don't know what they're really looking at. A lot of guys, that makes sense. We get asked from you know marshals and people and just first responders, hey, can I come and do a thing and can I train? And like Bunkham County, when they come out, they're training a guy, they bring him out to the show, and it's like I take time to stop the show, like setting up, and I walk them through with what's going on. That's cool. So we'll be doing that in Haywood County for for all the local marshals and AHJs that want to come out.

unknown 23:31

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Well, thank you for coming today. I appreciate you and I appreciate your time. And I am super excited to have a local fireworks company, I whatever, fireworks group, cohort, whatever you want to call y'all. I am super excited to have that in our own backyard. I think that's something people don't know, is that you know, I think people think of this as a visitor town, and they don't always think of the businesses that are here that aren't necessarily just for the visitors. So I'm excited for

Wrap Up And Community Pride

SPEAKER_00 24:02

that you're here and I appreciate you coming in today.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Thanks for joining us on Exploring the Valley. Until next time, keep celebrating the pride of our community and discovering the magic of the mountains. In the meantime, you're free to move about the valley.